sleep furiously. (2011)

69% of critics liked it
(26 reviews)
66% of users liked it
(284 ratings)

Sleep Furiously is set in a small farming community in mid Wales, about 50 miles north of Dylan Thomas' fictional village of Llareggub - and there is a sense in which this is a film 'for' Dylan Thomas, if not a contemporary translation of 'Under Milk Wood'. This is a place where Koppel's parents -… More Sleep Furiously is set in a small farming community in mid Wales, about 50 miles north of Dylan Thomas' fictional village of Llareggub - and there is a sense in which this is a film 'for' Dylan Thomas, if not a contemporary translation of 'Under Milk Wood'. This is a place where Koppel's parents - both refugees - found a home. It is a landscape and population that is changing rapidly as small scale agriculture is disappearing and the generation who inhabited a pre-mechanised world is dying out. Much influenced by his conversations with the writer Peter Handke, the film maker leads us on a poetic and profound journey into a world of endings and beginnings; a world of stuffed owls, sheep and fire. Allied to a soundtrack by the revered electronic musician Aphex Twin sleep furiously is lyrical film making at its best. -- (C) Official Site

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Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 35 min.
Directed By: Gideon Koppel
Genres: Documentary, Special Interest

In Theaters: Jul 29, 2011 Wide
Studio: Bard Entertainments

Critic Reviews

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"Sleep Furiously" is a lovely film, but maddeningly complacent.
Rachel Saltz, New York Times
Ultimately, the first impression given - of a place both familiar and strange - is the only impression offered. It's not enough.
Michelle Orange, Village Voice
A lingering, mildly lyrical look at village life.
Marty Mapes, Movie Habit
Lovely and comforting portrait of life in a Welsh village
Phil Hall, Film Threat
Zzzzz...
Cynthia Fuchs, PopMatters
Sleep Furiously returns again and again to this idea of transition: seasons change, cows go out to pasture and come in for milking, piglets are born, lambs follow their mothers as dogs herd them. Farming traditions are dynamic.
Rex Roberts, Film Journal International
A paean to a way of life that, regardless of Dylan Thomas' furious injunction, is going gently into that good night.
Vadim Rizov, Boxoffice Magazine
Beautifully shot but more than a little sterile.
Nick Davis, Nick's Flick Picks
A certain polite withholding, even if it masks some firm conviction or desire, seems to be a coin of the realm in Trefeurig, so it may well be apt that Koppel often films in a register very close to this one.
Louis Proyect, rec.arts.movies.reviews
If you love Dylan Thomas (who doesn't?), then you will love this film.
David Fear, Time Out New York
Gideon Koppel's free-form portrait of a Welsh farming community may be the most subtly poetic piece of cine-anthropology to come down the pike in eons.
Joseph Jon Lanthier, Slant Magazine
A paean to the dignity of ritualized traditions that aims for poetic calmness, but more often smoothes its subjects into deliberately emblematic somnambulism.
Doug Knoop, Seattle Times
This film is best taken as a visual ode to an all-but-forgotten way of life.
Philip French, Observer [UK]
Great claims have been made for it, which I cannot endorse, Koppel's stated intentions being infinitely more arresting than the completed film.
Andrew O'Hagan, This is London
Sleep Furiously may be the most beautifully elemental documentary film to have emerged in Britain in over a decade and I can't applaud it loudly enough.
Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall
Even though it's sometimes picturesque and involving, it's also so achingly slow and indulgent that it will test even the most patient viewers.
David Jenkins, Time Out
This is as fully formed and unique a debut movie as you could ever hope to see.
Wendy Ide, Times [UK]
Images of wistful sadness - lone figures with plodding dogs on rain-lashed hillsides - are interlaced with humour and moments of skin-prickling beauty that leave the audience undone.
Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]
The film has richness and an unshowy compassion, its grammar and pace adjusting to the tempo of the countryside.
Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Telegraph
Sleep furiously is a film whose lower-case title is in perfect keeping with the understated but tremulous mood it manages, with rare skill, to create and to maintain.

Read all 20 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Gordon A

Lyrical , poetic, impressionistic picture of rural Welsh life which oozes warm emotion from every frame. Ode to a way of life that is disappearing day by day. That feeling of sad nostalgia never overwhelms the director, though and he has crafted a thing of beauty.